Postmodern dance's conceptual, physical, and metaphysical roots spread far and wide, as four summer festival performances attested last week. The three newly minted works and a 30-year-old classic all used invented movement vocabularies with a tip of the hat to the formalities of ballet, they all applied highly theatrical staging effects, and none of them looked the least bit like the others.

At Jacob's Pillow, life was giving a hard time to the dancers of Cedar Lake Contemporary Ballet and Andrea Miller's Gallim Dance, and they were making the most of it. Cedar Lake's Orbo Novo, by the Belgian choreographer Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui, meditates on the idea of disability, inspired by the author Jill Bolte Taylor's account of experiencing a stroke. Sections of this harrowing text are recited in perfect vocal and gestural unison by Jubal Battisti and Kristen Weiser. They're joined by the other 16 dancers, speaking or mouthing the words in choral formations.

This preamble prepares us for the dance's metaphor of resistance. A massive wall of sliding lattice-work panels (by Alexander Dodge) cages and releases the dancers, separates them, and finally herds them together in a desperate, struggling cluster. Some of them are able to wriggle through its openings, and the whole structure can be pushed apart to allow for intervals of dancing.

Cherkaoui has invented a movement vocabulary that draws on the shifting, fluid center of weight employed in contact improvisation and the articulated, topsy-turvy acrobatics of hip-hop. From the premise that any part of the body can be totally flexible or inoperable at any given moment, the dancers, in groups and solos, tumble, twist, roll, shudder, struggle, collapse, answering a primal instinct to keep going.

The men of the company had most of this infinitely mobile movement to do, but Ebony Williams (a product of Boston Ballet School and Boston Conservatory) had a remarkable solo in which she'd unlock a limb and send it vigorously out into space, only to lose control of it and start unlocking another body part. The impressive, post-minimalist score by Szymon Brzóska was played live by the Mosaic String Quartet with guest pianist Aaron Wunsch.

You can't really track where Andrea Miller's movement comes from. The six dancers in Blush, which she choreographed for her company, seem to exist in a state of constant rage that's either being suppressed or being vented on some colleague. To begin the piece, a man poses and crouches, spars and sprints around the space. He could be a boxer, a muscle man, some athletic character, or someone else altogether. The images flash by before you can really know him.

Three women appear, dancing in unison, evolving slowly into poses and bursting out of them only to ooze into new ones. The three men are lying on the floor upstage in a ghastly silver light (by Vincent Vigilante). The women imply but don't exactly copy the seductive poses of fashion models. Shoulders a-tilt, elbows lifted, they frame their faces and draw attention to their upper bodies. They suddenly turn into harpies, stooped over and clawing in the direction of the men.

Review: Dance on Camera at Lincoln Center Gotham was awash in dance during early January as the annual Dance on Camera Festival coincided with the conference of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters (better known as APAP, the national bookers' convention).

Stuck-togetherness Chris Elam's Misnomer Dance Theater performed three seriously zany works Thursday night under the title "Being Together," in their third appearance for Concord Academy Summer Stages Dance.

Gallim Dance's Blush You don't want to take the title of Gallim Dance's Blush too seriously — at least not if you're expecting embarrassment, shame, modesty, confusion, those textbook signifiers of someone who'd like to creep away and hide.

Where the chips fell Dance history reverberated across Boston during the past few weeks, affirming that how we live now owes a lot to how we’ve chosen to remember — and forget.

Waters of Narcissus? Fleming created a one-woman Art Deco extravaganza — with herself looking like nothing so much as a Rolls Royce hood ornament.

Flow Instead of goading us with bits and pieces of the doom-and-gloom picture, some documentarian should come up with a unified theory of why we’re all screwed.

Beyond tradition On December 6 the University of Southern Maine Composers' Showcase will offer selections from new composers for eclectic ensembles, and on December 8 the Decompression Chamber Music Ensemble will offer an interactive concert pairing Robert Schumann with Philip Glass.

Hearing it out Here are some releases that I’ve been meaning to get to. There’s no time like now.

Screen scenes One persistent question surrounding the 35th Dance on Camera Festival, which winds up this Saturday at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater, is “Just what is dance film?” As a category it’s even more accommodating than dance itself.

Theatrics There’s got to be more to the future than the spectacle of gaudier and gaudier soulless cyberbodies.

JOFFREY BALLET GETS ITS DUE | May 08, 2012 New York has two great ballet companies, New York City Ballet and American Ballet Theater. Any other ballet troupe that wants to put down roots there has to develop a personality that's distinct from those two.

THE BOSTON BALLET’S DON QUIXOTE | May 01, 2012 In the long string of ballet productions extracted from Miguel de Cervantes's novel Don Quixote, the delusional Don has become a minor character, charging into situations where he shouldn't go and causing trouble instead of good works.